Hunters Requiem
by jabberwockey
Summary: The unintentional and unknown results of Sam and Dean's battle with the Wendigo.


Hunters Requiem

He awoke to his body being wracked in pain. Shoulders screaming from being hung by his wrists, spots on his body to numerous to count from where the creature had taken bites. In agony beyond any that he had ever encountered throughout his life. And he had tolerated pain and agony in his years on this earth.

In his youth he had been a soldier, fighting for his country and his life in far away unforgiving places. After his tour of duty he moved to Grand Junction Colorado to become a Park Ranger. He never quite overcame the nightmares and antisocial behaviors, well antisocial by the standards of those who have never fought in a war, which so many soldiers continue to battle long after the war is over. The peace of the woods appealed to him and even helped sooth the nightmares at least a little bit.

But that was all before….IT, whatever IT was. He had been out on his own, searching for some lost campers. He only expected to find their bodies as the number of reported grizzly attacks was on the rise. Only natural as the number of people in their territory increased as the inept and the idiotic from the city came to the deep woods of Lost Creek seeking to forget the strife of city life if just for a bit.

As he was following their trail he heard a scream in the direction he was heading. Picking up his pace but still cautious, he came to the entrance of an abandoned mine. The screams had ceased but must have come from within the mineshaft. Stupid campers must have thought it a great adventure to investigate the abandoned mine.

As he stuck his head inside to allow his eyes to adjust to the dark, IT attacked. God was it fast! He couldn't be sure but in that brief flash it traveled probably 20 yards or more in the blink of an eye. It even appeared to walk upright, definitely NOT a grizzly. Total blackness, some from being in the mineshaft and some from blacking out and no way to tell the difference between the two. Time blurred and flashes between periods of consciousness could have lasted seconds, hours, or days. No way to tell in the unchanged darkness of the shaft.

He awoke again to screams of agony from further up the shaft. Probably IT was feeding on one of the campers he had been looking for. He thought briefly about saying something to try and sooth them but really, what could he say? That and the fact that making any noise would only draw the IT's attention. All things considered he was a decent person, in spite of his years as a hunter of men. He would help someone if he could but he was helpless himself.

The screaming stopped when he lost consciousness. He awoke again to the sound of voices, not screaming in agony. Rescuers maybe? He tried to warn them but found he couldn't speak. His throat was in agony along with the rest of him. Probably from him screaming helplessly as the IT fed on his body. He could hear several different voices but couldn't quite make out what they were saying. Were they calling out names? Tommy? Haley? Dean? Those weren't the names of the campers he had been searching for.

Now sounds of a struggle. Most of the sounds are of people scrambling to get away but at least one, maybe two of them, are fighting back. A fierce sense of pride and joy surges within him as he realizes that two of them are apparently soldiers or fighters of some kind. And they came prepared for a fight! IT is wary, tiptoeing through its home where before it had strode through as a lord in his castle.

The sounds became more muffled and then louder as the battle moved through the tunnels, sometimes closer and sometimes further away. Finally he heard a chilling scream, completely and utterly inhuman and unnatural. The soldiers must have won! Even in its inhumanity, he recognized the screams of an opponent mortally wounded.

He could hear the voices again, raised in joy not terror. To his horror the voices started to move away from him, towards the exit as best as he could tell. He tried to scream but no sound came out. He tried to thrash around and make noise but could barely make himself twitch and spin from where he dangled helplessly from the roof of the shaft. As the voices receded out of hearing his efforts to make noise cost him his consciousness.

He awoke some time later to the most complete silence he had ever heard. With IT in the shaft he either heard it moving about and feeding or at least the sounds of sleeping as its den was just around the corner from where he hung. Nothing, not even a whimper from another survivor. No cricket song or scrabbling about of rats and mice as IT had either eaten or chased them all away.

Silence and complete darkness. Wait, not complete darkness. What was causing that faint red glow? OH MY GOD! They set the mineshaft on fire! Why would they do that? He was still down here waiting to be rescued!

The fire caught and spread quickly on the rotten timbers of the mineshaft. As the fire spread, light filtered in through cracks in the floorboards above, he could at least start to take in some of his surroundings. He could see the corpses of the creature's previous victims further down the shaft where this branch ended. Dining room adjacent to the living quarters. Sarcasm, just another survival trait of the experienced soldier.

He had panicked at first but quickly realized that he was going to die and smoke inhalation would be a quick and painless way to go, relatively speaking that is. Eventually the fire spread enough that he could start to make out his immediate surroundings. He noticed his pack lying on the ground in front of him and hope surged inside him. The pack appeared to be unopened and had medical supplies and food if he could just get his hands unhooked from the ceiling.

As he struggled feebly to get himself free the light increased, allowing him to see more detail. Why was his pack in such bad shape? It was made of heavy duty water resistant canvas and there were no mice or rats to chew it up. Why were there holes in it? And why was that corpse next to his pack wearing his dog tags? He knew they were his because of the bullet hole near the bottom of one of them, a reminder of how close he had come to dying in combat.

As the fire collapsed the floor above, he recognized the clothing on the mutilated corpse. It was his own. The entire section collapsed, landing on all of the corpses littering the shaft. As the bodies burned, he noticed dozens of others like him hanging from the ceiling in various states of dismemberment, all with the same shocked look on their faces as he had. It was the realization that they had been dead for quite some time and that they were well beyond saving. Or were they? As the bodies burned, their counterparts started to burn as well. They all let out screams of agony, which turned into screams of pure joy and ecstasy as they all realized they had been saved after all.

As Sam and Dean climbed into the Impala after leaving Haley and her brothers with the local authorities, they paused as an eerie sound came from the woods in the direction of the Wendigo's lair. It sounded like several dozen people sighing in pleasure all at once, almost musically.

"Fricking weird" said Dean as he fired up the Impala and drove away.


End file.
